It’s in my study and at the same time our dining room. We live on the first floor of a villa in Hellerup. Here I write my compositions, teach saxophone playing, as well as piano and singing.  

At the table I can sit and let my eyes fall on the sketch for a new piece og music. Despite the distance, I discover a mistake, get up and walk over to put the necessary sharp for a C.  

“That green piano is actually one of the first things I can remember,” says my youngest daughter. She’s over forty now, and in my attempt to figure out where the piano came from, I’ve talked to family, friends and colleagues from that time because: 

“Who painted it green?” I cannot remember me doing it, so I still don’t know.

We are on Bornholm. I’m fourteen years old, and I have  stomach pains. When the destination finally comes into view, we have to walk the last bit with lots of gifts and luggage. It’s freezing cold and it sticks so strangely in my panties. 

Inside the farm it is warm and cosy, and the smell of new baked biscuits and meatballs reach our nostrils. The living rooms look like something from a Christmas tale for children. A high-decorated tree takes up the space in the living room, and there are lots of people, adults as well as children, that I do not know. 

At the toilet, Mom helps me find a piece of cotton wool and some old cloth to wrap around. 

After the meal, the slightly older children play Dirt-Pants, a card game where everybody is supposed to participate. The game includes a shout “Dirt-pants!”, when you have finished your hand, and it is loud and laughing, brutal and hovering.

I blush, and think everyone can look inside me.

One of them has taken over. She is steeling the show, and she is behaving like a child.

I have to find out, who she is. It has become too much during the past month, close to scary.

There are seven queens. I have always felt that Francisca was the artist and deeply in charge of the creative and artistic areas. I have believed in her, and there might not be one good reason not to. Maybe one of the others have taken over her role – or simply pushed her aside.

It cannot be Kaisa. She has, since the day I realized the need of coming up with some assisting tools inside myself, been the wise woman. The one who can think deeply into the human being that I am. The philosopher, the coach. the psychologist. And being so: an old woman in a lightening contact with the past and the future and the sage decisions.

I am suspicious of Liana, the mother, the gardener, the cook and the health freak. She is always coming up with new recipes. She wants to spend time outside as often as possible, and she loves to shop for good food. Then she has this tendency of wanting to chat with her daughters, her sister or some of her good friends all the time. To her it is important to know that everybody is OK. And if she can, she wants to help.

Jessica, the young and beautiful flirtatious feminine soul went shopping yesterday. She spent too much on new shoes. She bought sent for the bathroom and she talked for a long time with Renate in the yarn shop in Flensburg. Within a few moments they touched on their love stories throughout their lives, and Jessica had to use a lot of inner strength to say good-buy and walk straight to the car.

It seems like Olga has a hard time trimming the others to follow a strict plan. She wants more systematic day routines. She wants rituals, and she wants to see results. She is trying to come up with ideas about how to organize the time, so the book project is really moving forward. And yes – there are plenty of plans and schedules, but something unexpected such as spontaneous  meetings or ideas interfere. Suddenly things are moving in other directions, than those planned for.

It is not likely, that Myrna is not working. She is busy all the time. Very, very busy! In the last days she has controlled the budget, she corrected the German essays from the 10^th grade, she sent away the first chapter to the beta-readers (although Amanda was still in doubt), and she is constantly working ahead with the transcription of the Bond-Medley for the choir. Everyday Myrna is the one taking care, that the saxophone is being played and practiced for at least an hour. She is extremely hard-working!

Amanda is the executive and the stage personality. She loves to be on stage. It does not really matter if it is in front of an audience with a Duo or a Quartet or if it is a class of fifteen teenagers attending a lesson in German at the school where she teaches –  or a private lesson in playing saxophone and improvising.

But who is the woman (part of me), wanting to watch YouTube videos with young Italian teachers? I mostly start my day watching Veronica or Fiorella or Alberto, or I simply read an article in Adesso – the monthly magazine in Italian, that I receive in the mailbox. I just love to study Italian! I know that it is a kind of an addiction. The addiction to learn more, be better, having skills, talk flawless Italian, and most of all: travel there.

Of cause I can consider a Paola or an Alessandra, a Veronica or a Fiorella? But could this attraction to study Italian be put into one of the already seven existing personalities inside of me?

It is hard to find out where she belongs, the one who wants to “migliorare il suo Italiano, tutto il tempo”! There is no holiness about having eight Queens. When it comes to a voting I can end up with the problem 4-4 in my little democratic inside world. Then who is going to win? How win them all, when there are no agreements?